Let Me Down Easy OFF-BROADWAY REVIEWS

• NEW YORK TIMES REVIEW OF Let Me Down Easy

  

  Woman of 1,000 Faces Considers the Body

  Charles Isherwood

  October 8, 2009: "Even if you have already had your fill of heated debate about the crisis in American health care — informed, opinionated or just plain batty — do not go in fear of “Let Me Down Easy,” the new solo show from Anna Deavere Smith, which opened Wednesday night at the Second Stage Theater. The buzz words that have been filling the airwaves like swarms of gnats (“public option,” “death panels”) make no appearances in this engrossing collection of testimonials about life, death and the care of the ailing body."

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• THEATERMANIA REVIEW OF Let Me Down Easy

  

  Let Me Down Easy

  Brian Scott Lipton

  October 8, 2009: Death is a touchy subject for some people to talk about, but it's one that Anna Deavere Smith tackles head-on in Let Me Down Easy, her thought-provoking new theater piece, now at Second Stage Theatre. More precisely, it's a subject discussed by many of the more than 20 people whose conversations are presented verbatim by Smith over the course of an engrossing 95 minutes.

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• TALKIN' BROADWAY REVIEW OF Let Me Down Easy

  

  Let Me Down Easy

  Matthew Murray

  October 7, 2009: The words of a broken heart or a description of dying from the inside out? The title of Anna Deveare Smith’s new one-woman show at Second Stage, Let Me Down Easy, could mean either, according to James H. Cone, the first of the 20 vivid, reaped-from-real-life characters Smith plays in her 100-minute outing. They’re all on hand to talk about health, living, and dying, and they create a beautiful collage of voices and opinions that all resonate within the realm of one of the most important (and contentious) issues facing the United States today.

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• BACKSTAGE REVIEW OF Let Me Down Easy

  

  Let Me Down Easy

  David Sheward

  October 7, 2009: Anna Deavere Smith continues her chronicle of American life in "Let Me Down Easy," probably the most heartfelt example of her unique brand of theater, which combines journalism and performance by employing a script based on verbatim transcripts of conversations with dozens of real people on a single theme. Smith plays all the characters, capturing their physical and vocal traits as well as their passions and intellect, with the aid of versatile lighting by Jules Fisher and Peggy Eisenhauer; simple, suggestive costumes by Ann Hould-Ward; and a silent stagehand.

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• ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY REVIEW OF Let Me Down Easy

  

  Let Me Down Easy

  Melissa Rose Bernardo

  October 9, 2009: Anna Deavere Smith can’t seem to get out of the hospital. In addition to her featured role as a no-nonsense administrator opposite Edie Falco in Showtime’s Nurse Jackie, 4 of the 20 characters she portrays in her engrossing new drama, Let Me Down Easy, are either hospital patients or physicians. And the entire 95-minute show centers on doctors, nurses, illness, health care, physiology, spirituality, and death.

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